Terrascope Radio

Location: 77 Mass. Ave., Massachusetts

Terrascope Radio is a class developed collaboratively by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Terrascope program and the MIT program in Comparative Media Studies (CMS). It is an exploration of radio as a medium of expression and communication, particularly communication about complex environmental issues. As part of the class, teams of students produce radio programs about a place they have been studying all year. In Terrascope, MIT freshmen study complex environmental problems in a team-based, project-oriented setting. In the fall they focus on understanding, and proposing solutions for, a particular problem. In the spring they explore ways of communicating the knowledge they have gained. Terrascope Radio is led by Dr. Ari Epstein; teaching assistants Joellen Easton and Rekha Murthy played key roles in developing the class.

Do populations of microbes, such as bacteria, have a kind of "social" structure? What happens if you put a microbe on the world's smallest diving board, and why would you do that in the first place? In search of answers to these and other questions, Measuring Marine Microbes takes you into the lab, out to the lunch trucks where scientists have some of their best ideas, and beyond. Produced with funding from the National Science Foundation.

From the remote Galapagos Archipelago, to the Arizona desert, to a tiny farming village in southern India, to the top of a volcano in Iceland, Terrascope Radio's young producers take you around the world, exploring how each culture's people face--and overcome--the challenges that come with living where they do.